Roger W. Hecht was raised Wheaton, Maryland, in the Washington DC suburbs. He earned his B.A. in English from the University of Maryland, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in Literature from Syracuse University. While in Tucson, he co-founded the Among Other Things reading and performance series and served as director of the Tucson Poetry Festival. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Oneonta, where he teaches courses in American literature and creative writing and co-directs the Red Dragon Reading Series. When he’s not teaching, he plays drums in a local Ithaca blues band, Off the Rails.
He has published critical essays on Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. A three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, he has published poems in Denver Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Diagram, Prick of the Spindle, Gone Lawn, and A-Minor, Yes Poetry, and many other journals. He has published two poetry collections: Talking Pictures (Cervena Barva Press) and Witness Report (Finishing Line Press), and two edited collections: The Erie Canal Reader (Syracuse University Press) and Freemen Awake! Rally Songs and Poems from New York’s Anti-Rent Movement (DCHA Press). He is currently writing a book exploring the ecological themes in the films of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. He lives with his wife, the author Joan Marcus, and their daughters in Ithaca, New York.
Roger W. Hecht 